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Positronic

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Positronic , (edited )

They didn’t, Google are the first to do three years of OS updates and security patches with the Pixel 2 and extended that to the first gen Pixel. Samsung were doing two OS updates until they promised they would do 3 OS updates at the Note20 launch and extended it to the S10 and other models. You are correct that they upgraded that to four with the S21 before Google made the jump from 3 to 7.

Positronic ,

A hands-on article from the same website says it’s not pure wood. It’s been treated to protect it from water and skin oil

Redmi Turbo 3 announced with SD 8s Gen 3 and 90W charging (www.gsmarena.com)

Starts at 1999 RMB ($276/€257) for the 12 GB RAM 256 GB storage variant. There are three other variants, 12/512 for 2299 RMB ($318/€296), 16/512 for 2499 RMB($345/€322) and 16 GB/1 TB variant for 2799($387/€360) RMB. It may be available as the Poco F6 internationally. The primary sensor is a Sony LYT 600 sensor which is...

Positronic ,

Tbf it is cheaper than the Edge 40 Pro, they messed up their naming. This phone is the successor to the Edge 40 not the Pro. Mind you there are still some downgrades as they downgraded the storage to UFS 2.2.

Positronic ,

This phone is 72.4 mm wide according to GSMarena. Height might still be an issue for you since it’s 161.2 mm

Positronic ,

All Sony phones (including their flagships) get two years of OS updates and three years of security patches. That’s rumoured to change this year but the Xperia 1 III and 5 III are not getting Android 14.

Positronic ,

It was comparable in price to the Edge 40 in India which was the only market it was launched in at the time of the comment. The European price is over the top but it should probably get price cuts soon.

Positronic ,

3 years of OS updates and 4 years of security patches according to the product page

Positronic ,

It costs less than any of Apple or Google’s offerings and they do not make money through software and services unlike Apple or Google. I think it’s unreasonable to expect 7 years or more of OS updates on a phone that costs $300-400. They should do better on their flagship though, it costs double but still has the same support.

Positronic ,

I don’t know if the hardware will be good enough in 4 years anyways. They’ve cut corners to get to that price point, the chip is similar to the 778G from 3 years back and it’s using UFS 2.2. Honestly the phone feels like it was made for India and the marketing indicates that. They don’t have many options with a clean OS and 3 years of OS updates at that price point there.

Positronic ,

It might not be powerful enough to run the software longer and the hardware may show it’s age. Secondly the cost of the phone cannot be ignored either, more software updates means more money spent on software development. Android updates have to be certified by Google. This process costs money. It isn’t feasible to expect a company to provide more than 4-5 years of updates at that price point unless they start charging for updates or make money through services or ads.

Positronic ,

True, although you’d have to pay quite a bit extra to get 7 years of updates as this phone is half the MSRP of a Pixel 8. The 7a is a year old now so it’ll likely only get two more years of OS updates and four years of security patches. Tbf it is good Nothing are providing 3 updates since the phone is $300 in India and €349 in Europe. The Poco X6 Pro matches the update commitment but MIUI had a reputation for being buggy outside China. HyperOS (MIUI’s successor) also has ads in system apps and a lot of pre-loaded bloatware. It does have a faster chip and storage compared to the Phone 2a though so there are pros and cons to both devices.

Positronic ,

There were rumours about “Dream Chip” i.e. Samsung Mobile designing their own chip. Exynos is designed by Samsung LSI, they’re part of the same conglomerate but there is a lot of internal competition apparently. Might explain why the Samsung OLED panel on iPhones is sometimes ahead of the Samsung OLED panel on Samsung flagships.

Positronic ,

If you’re willing to pay a lot of money, Sony might be an option. They have kept the micro SD card on their phones. There are rumours they’ll start updating their phones longer with the VI series too but we’ll have to wait and see.

Qualcomm Champions the Most Powerful Snapdragon 7 Series Yet, Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, Featuring Exceptional On-Device AI Capabilities (www.qualcomm.com)

This is the official announcement post, AnandTech’s article is much better but it links to the Qualcomm post so thought that would be the main link. Pretty much confirms it’s a cut down version of the 8s Gen 3 released a few days back. The OnePlus Ace 3V already ships with this chip in China.

Positronic ,

Realme 12 Pro+ does what you’re asking for but availability is limited to a few countries. Design may still be considered fancy though.

Exclusive: Google Pixel 8a boasts 120Hz display, Tensor G3, DisplayPort output, better availability (www.androidauthority.com)

Wonder if they’ll use a rigid OLED panel like they did on the 7a and 8a. Dylan Raga wrote an excellent piece reviewing the Pixel 8’s display where he said they’d finally switched to a flexible OLED panel on the regular model.

Positronic OP ,

Flexible OLED panels have smaller bezels, better viewing angles and are less prone to exhibiting a rainbow effect. You can check Dylan Raga’s review of the Pixel 6, 7 and 8 to see why the 8’s display is an upgrade over the 6 and 7.

Positronic ,

I definitely think Apple and Samsung can do a smaller premium phone if they want to as Apple makes the lion’s share of profits in the industry and Samsung is the only other manufacturer that makes a significant amount of profit. Heck Samsung can probably do a smaller midrange phone as well. I do not think it makes sense for other manufacturers as they make 3% profit and targeting a very vocal but demanding minority isn’t going to help them improve that.

Small phone users should also temper their expectation, I saw a lot of comments from people saying they didn’t get the iPhone mini because they expected the Pro Max’s specs in the mini form factor. They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn’t feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor. Increasing the thickness might help with the battery but that’s about the only component that benefits with an increase in one dimension.

Positronic ,

It probably is if the rumour about them switching to a 19.5:9 resolution is true. It’ll still be larger than the S24 and Pixel 8 because of the top and bottom bezel but height should decrease by a couple of mm.

Positronic ,

Yeah they’re regular sized, you could consider the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro as regular sized as well. I think they could probably do a smaller phone about the size of the iPhone 12/13 mini as well if they wanted to. However I’m not sure if they’ll do it since the S22 is their smallest phones since the S10e and they haven’t gone smaller than that unless you go all the way back to the S4 (which itself has a similar width to the S10e). I understand why they wouldn’t do it because it seems the people who want an iPhone 5S to iPhone mini sized phone are extremely vocal but that doesn’t seem to translate to numbers in real life.

Positronic ,

I don’t think they’re going to be able to put the same cameras on a smaller phone, especially if you look at something like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra or the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. The sensors are massive and require a lot of space. You may be able to fit two of those sensors on a 6.1 inch phone without compromising on other things like the battery, haptics, antennae for example. They could probably fit a bigger battery by making the phone thicker but it seems like manufacturers like a uniform thickness for most of their models or somewhere thereabouts probably because it’s easier to machine the frame.

Positronic ,

I’m not a fan of the cameras on the S24 and base iPhone 15. Samsung have recycled the same cameras for three generations now, I think they can put a larger primary sensor in there.

To be honest looking at the teardowns it’s impressive what Apple and Samsung have managed to fit in their phones, I think the Xiamoi 14 Ultra isn’t doing itself any favours with that camera placement though, seems inefficient having the modules in the middle of the phone?

Idk, Apple does a better job with the Pro as compared to the regular model. Google, Xiaomi and Asus managed to fit bigger batteries on the Pixel 8, Xiaomi 14 and Zenfone 10 without increasing the size too much. Here’s a teardown of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. It seems like they’re using space pretty efficiently in there.

Positronic ,

Yeah that’s a fair point. I don’t like the output of the primary sensor and the 3x on the S24. Feels like they oversharpen and oversaturate colours way too much. Also feel the hardware is lacking compared to the Pixel 8 and iPhone 15 Pro’s sensor as they’re physically bigger and don’t have as much of a problem with shutter lag.

Positronic ,

Yeah it’s strange some of them expect the exact same specs as the Pro or Ultra phone in a smaller form factor. Some sacrifices have to be made to fit components in a smaller form factor as you cannot overcome the laws of physics. I’ve seen many ridiculous comments saying manufacturers can fit the same cameras and all the sensors along with a bigger battery if they made the phone thicker. It’s almost as if they expect the bigger phone to get neutered to maintain parity.

Positronic , (edited )

Not… Really… Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they’re one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.

There’s isn’t enough physical space for three sensors on a smaller phone especially if it’s the size of the iPhone mini. They can fit them on a 6.1-6.2 inch device, that’s why the S24 and iPhone 15 Pro have them. However the 16 Pro is supposedly getting larger because it’s getting a larger sensor for 5x optical zoom. If you look at a periscope lens, it needs a substantial amount of extra width as well. A teardown of any recent flagship reveals that camera modules occupy more space than they did if you look at tearsowns from three or four years back. This makes sense because the sensor itself is increasing in size and the size needs to go up both length and width wise to maintain the aspect ratio of the sensor. Heck in some cases like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and Oppo Find X7 Ultra, the camera modules occupy more space than the rest of the motherboard.

The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points.

The iPhone mini was cheaper but it had pretty much the same specs as the regular iPhone except for wireless charging speed iirc. Sales were much lower than the regular model despite that (around or less than 5% of total iPhone 12 and 13 sales). If Apple couldn’t make a smaller phone sell particularly well, I doubt anyone else could.

Positronic ,

First of all sorry for the delayed reply but i only got the notification a few hours back for some reason.

I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that “more cameras” is the complaints being made here.

It is one of the most common complaints cited against buying a smaller phone especially in tech enthusiast circles. Some people say they ended up getting the bigger phone because it had better cameras or the presence of the telephoto was enough.

I hard disagree with this. Apple is literally the worst company to try to make this shit work.

We’ll have to disagree. Apple have been one of the best at maintaining equality between a larger phone and a smaller phone in recent times since they manufacture phones in enough volume to actually care about miniaturizing components. The minis had feature parity with the regular iPhones of that year. The Pros are larger but they’ve maintained feature parity with the Pro Max in most instances except for the 12 Pro/12 Pro Max and 15 Pro/15 Pro Max. Even with those two instances the only difference was in the cameras. I’ll acknowledge there’s no fair comparison with Google or Samsung but that’s only because they don’t make a smaller Pro/Ultra phone. Even if they did, I’m fairly sure the cameras would be different.

1 in 20 is still a decent number of people.

In the volumes Apple sells, that probably equates to a couple of million units. 5% would not be a very attractive proposition for other manufacturers since they’d need to increase profit margins to actually make money from making a smaller phone as they deal with much smaller volumes.

Positronic ,

Seems like an overclocked version of the 7+Gen 3, interesting they didn’t release that chip with this one.

Positronic ,

I don’t think it will be a loss leader because phones at this price are specced the same or better.

They might have one or two better specs but the package at that price is pretty good. The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is more expensive, has a fuck ton of bloatware and launched with Android 13 out of the box. Also has that idiotic curved display and terrible auxiliary cameras. The Poco X6 Pro has a much faster SoC but the cameras are not as good as HyperOS is essentially a more refined version of MIUI.

I agree the 2 was too expensive. It got a drastic price increase compared to the 1 without upgrading too much. What they should have done is released a 2 around the same price as the 1 and released a Pro version if they wanted to sell a phone with a bigger profit margin.

Positronic ,

Really depends on the location. In North America and Western Europe, it costs about as much as a OnePlus 12R which has a better chip, bigger battery and will get updates for longer. In the US, that’s after discounts. There were times you could get an S23 for the same price which isn’t a good comparison for the Phone 2 unless the bigger display,better battery life and unlockable bootloader are more important than IP68 water and dust resistance, a faster chip and an offline presence.

Positronic ,

I feel the cameras are better than the majority of the competition at that price if the Pixel 7a is excluded. I agree they’re nothing special but Xiaomi’s shots are overexposed and they insist on throwing a rubbish 8 MP ultrawide on everything that’s not their flagship number series.

I also am not a fan of Samsung’s image processing, feel they oversharpen too much. Pixel is probably the safest option if still images are the most important thing unless one is willing to go through some hassle to get the Vivo X100 Pro, Oppo Find X7 Ultra or Xiaomi 14 Ultra. I feel those cameras are the best purely because of the hardware that is in them. For video, Apple are still the best with Samsung a distant second.

I'm tired with all this Big-Phone-Elitism

I’m someone with relatively small hands, plus I want my phone to be on the smaller side since I prefer to use my tablet/computer/tv to watch content. But this trend where many manufacturers tend to keep futures away from smaller phones to drive people to bigger phones is driving me crazy and really makes it hard for me to buy...

Positronic ,

Yeah it’s actually infuriating to read some of these threads. Some of the small phone users expect Oppo Find X7 Ultra cameras with a 5000 mAh battery and headphone jack in an iPhone 5S form factor and the only argument they make is the phone can be thicker. Thickness is only one dimension, all these components need space in other dimensions too.

Positronic ,

Is there a noticeable difference between the Titanium on the Ultra and the aluminium on the other models? I’m guessing it’s the colours on the Ultra that stand out more.

Positronic , (edited )

GSMarena is saying South Korea gets the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant. If that’s true, it’s a safe indicator the Exynos is dogshit. Wouldn’t be surprised if performance/watt is worse than the 865 since no Samsung fabbed SoC has beaten that one yet.

Edit: seems like South Korea are getting Exynos for the S24 and S24+. Looks like GSMarena are wrong. Hope it isn’t a shit show like the 990 and 2200 but I don’t expect much.

Positronic ,

8+2 MP rubbish on a phone that’s surely going to cost $600 or more at launch is honestly infuriating. This won’t make sense in any market other than India.

Samsung Galaxy S23 FE: Snapdragon vs. Exynos compared (www.gsmarena.com)

As expected the Snapdragon has better battery life. It lasts 13.2% longer than the Exynos in their battery test (9:45h vs 8:28h) with the biggest differences being in calls over an LTE network (34:15h vs 28:26h) and video playback scores (11:27h vs 9:16h). The Snapdragon version is superior in their web browsing and gaming...

Positronic OP ,

Unfortunately both chips were fabbed by Samsung Foundry. Tensor is also fabbed by then which explains the overheating, poor efficiency and throttling. I really hope Samsung can catch up with TSMC with 3nm but would be wary of a Samsung fabbed SoC until they prove they’ve caught up. Qualcomm moved from Samsung to TSMC for the 8+ Gen 1 because Samsung weren’t meeting their targets as they had low yield. The yield issue seems to be fixed according to some media outlets but doesn’t seem like the fab itself has improved.

Positronic , (edited )

Counter argument: I get frustrated when people complain about the lack of SD card and headphone jack on every phone that doesn’t have those. I get it some people really want those features but do they really expect manufacturers to add them after they’ve gone? Sony’s the only manufacturer that changed course and they only did it because they’re a niche brand with an audience that appreciates those features.

I feel it’s foolish to expect someone like Google to suddenly change their mind because someone on the internet said they wouldn’t buy their phones without those features. They’ve not had expendable storage on any Nexus or Pixel phone except for the Nexus One and the jack has been gone since the Pixel 2. I know the A series had it longer but it’s been two generations since it’s disappeared from there as well.

For whatever it’s worth, I would like to have the headphone jack personally but it’s not a dealbreaker if it’s not there. Don’t care about the SD card and wouldn’t use it anyways since it’s extremely slow compared to internal storage and I’ve had a bad experience when I’ve used it on previous phones when it got corrupted and I lost a significant amount of pictures. Didn’t use it for apps because I knew it would result in slower load times so was really disappointed when it got corrupted. I’m not the only one who thinks this way, app developers hate the SD card too. Linus Sebastian also said that someone in the industry said it has gone away because of performance concerns.

Note: this isn’t aimed at you, it’s just a rant against the “no SD card, no 3.5 mm, no buy” crowd that always posts those comments whenever some phone doesn’t have it.

Positronic ,

More telephoto cameras on midrange phones. It seems like they’re returning on some Chinese flagship killers. Would be great if Samsung and Google followed suit. Would be especially nice if we got periscope lenses.

I’d like to see LTPO on more phones, seems like it’s limited only to the highest end flagship now. Would be nice to save battery when the screen is not being touched.

Something I don’t like on a lot of Chinese midrangers - those rubbish 1/4" 8 MP ultrawides, don’t think it would cost much more to have a 12 MP ultrawide and the difference in quality would be big enough to justify using it. Samsung do it on the A2x and A3x too.

Positronic , (edited )

My comment mentioned why the SD card was removed. To paraphrase Linus, they’re the cheapest form of NAND storage and are extremely unreliable. When they fail, the average consumer blames the phone and not the cheap SD card they put into it. I’m not a fan of cloud storage but most people do not need anything other than the base variant now since it comes with 128 GB out of the box. Some manufacturers are even offering 256 GB.

I also mentioned that I’d like having the jack but it’s not a dealbreaker that it’s gone. Also doubt we would have seen as much progress with truly wireless earbuds if more manufacturers did not remove the headphone jack. I know some people detest them and think they’re a cash grab but they’re a game changer when it comes to exercising and moving around. However I’ll agree that removing the jack also opened another revenue stream for manufacturers which could be construed as a cash grab.

Additionally I stated my point wasn’t directly at the OP but was a rant at the senseless “no jack, no SD card, DOA” comment which can be seen at the launch of a phone who’s manufacturer hasn’t included those features for 5 or more years. It’s just beating a dead horse at this point. It is like expecting CRT TVs to be the default instead of flat TVs. CRTs also had advantages but the market has moved on. Additionally I think it might be better to actually comment about a phone having a headphone jack or SD card slot or both of those since that’s a much more positive way of looking at things since not having them is the default now.

Positronic ,

From my experience it’s been the opposite, the phones have survived but the SD cards have died twice. Haven’t cared about it since then.

Positronic ,

I doubt they’ll do it since it’s not on the regular Pixel 8. I think that’s a feature they’ll keep for the higher end. Pixel Xa series already has a faster processor and better cameras compared to their competition in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

Positronic , (edited )

My initial comment also mentioned why developers hated the SD card slot. To quote Koush

The SD card needs to go away. It’s a nightmare for developers. There’s too much variability here. SD Cards can be slow, resulting in poor app performance. They can come and go, or be swapped, and that results in unpredictable behavior if an app was expecting an SD card. One contiguous block of data needs to become the standard here (with different OEM SKUs for more/less storage), as it has been on iOS since the first iPhone.

The comments from Linus came from an industry insider he said he trusts. I would be inclined to believe him since he used to carry a Note9 and was a massive advocate of SD cards.

Also don’t think the reliability of the cards was an issue when I got them, they were high rated Samsung and Sandisk models.

And 128 GB is almost nothing, kinda proving my point that this is more of a use case point than an argument against the feature.

You’re looking at this from the point of a power user and not the average person. Most normal people just get the base variant when they see it has 128 GB and are happy with it.

They’re objectively more reliable than cloud storage though, should you ever go somewhere where network connectivity is an issue

I mentioned I dislike cloud storage but with USB-C ports I can actually use my external SSD or a USB drive to backup my phone if I want to although it’s not something I do often.

Given that they’re still using Bluetooth, which is still terrible with any interference, low bandwidth, and has the same tedious connectivity problems it’s had for the past decade…I’d argue we have yet to see that progress where it matters.

When was the last time you used a Bluetooth headset? I had issues initially in 2018 and 2019 but things like the Galaxy Buds+ and newer generations of truly wireless earbuds have fixed the connectivity and interference issues. Some Bluetooth headphones support LDAC and LHDC codecs which allow for high bandwidth. LDAC is part of AOSP so it should be on every Android phone running Oreo or newer unless the OEM has removed it for some reason.

If that were true, there wouldn’t be so many people vocally expressing why new products aren’t adequate without these basic features.

That’s because there are a small group of enthusiasts who are extremely vocal. Most people have moved on, they may want one or both features but they aren’t dealbreakers for them. Also wouldn’t say a bunch of enthusiasts complaining means it expresses the sentiments of everyone. Look at the outcry about the iPhone mini, it didn’t sell very well but online communities would have you believe it was the most popular device of that lineup.

Positronic ,

They were using the telephoto as a point of differentiation too. I’m not sure why they even bother with that awful 8 MP ultrawide since it’s unusable. The images have no detail at all. Might as well just have one good camera instead of one useable and two unusable cameras.

Positronic ,

Well yeah NAND has a certain amount of read/write cycles but it’s always going to be an issue with SD cards because they’re using the cheapest form of NAND. As a result of that they’re not going to get some of the complex safety mechanisms that are built into internal NAND. So I think we’ll have to disagree here.

Positronic ,

Not sure if all manufacturers do this, there are also instances where the user might set up the SD card as adoptable storage which would make it hard to differentiate between internal storage and the SD card.

Positronic ,

How many people are going to read that properly? We’re not just talking about enthusiasts, regular users will do it if they get the option and think they can store their apps on there.

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